The Wozpak Special Edition is now priced for the Christmas Holidays. The 350 page book with the notes from Steve Wozniaks’s Apple-1 and Apple II notes was produced in coordination with Steve Woznaik by Brian Wiser and Bill Martens. It includes a number of interesting items and introductions from the men who made the Apple II computer what it became. It is normally available for the list price of $49.95, but during the holidays, it is 20% off at just…
With the release of OSX 10.10.1 the Spy decided to take another try with Yosemite and installed it on one machnine. Seeing none of the problems he experienced with the beta at WWDC, he eventually installed on three machines–a late 2007 MacBook Pro seventeen inch (emergency unit), a 2013 Retina MacBook (main one at work), and a Westmere tower MacPro (home). So far all has gone well, though there has been no opportunity to test the fusion space where Mac OX…
Ivan Drucker has once again released a plugin for Applesoft on the Apple II computer. His new Magic Goto allows for labels to be used instead of line numbers. Accrding to his posting: Magic Goto is now available, so you can program in Applesoft without ever having to think about line numbers, yielding better organized and much more readable code. It lets you GOTO, GOSUB, or ONERR GOTO a label in a REM statement. For example, GOSUB “showMainMenu” will find…
Mike Maginnis, the curator of the Apple II Scans website (http://www.apple2scans.net) has made available all of the issues of the Apple /// related Open Apple Gazette online. The Open Apple Gazette was the newsletter produced by the San Francisco based Apple ///’rs, an Apple /// centric users group. You can download all nine of the issues of the Open Apple Gazette as well as the Promo edition from the Apple II Scans website at: http://www.apple2scans.net/magazines/open-apple-gazette/
David Schmenk has posted an update to his self developed PLASMA SDK. According to the posting on the Apple II Enthusiasts PLASMA for the Holidays (For all you programmer types looking to escape from the relatives this week) Just like last year, here is an update to the PLASMA sandbox (an Apple II IDE to play around with PLASMA). It is (sort of) self-documenting progression through some PLASMA example code. PLASMA has grown up a lot since last year. With…
The third section of the Ben Heckendorn Apple-1 replica build has been posted on The Ben Heck Show page on YouTube. This section completed the build and shows how to build the case with the CNC machine. Ben even tries his hand at entertaining the masses with his singing in this episode.
The Virtual Apple II website has updated their database to version 1.25. The latest version contains dozens of new box blurbs and box covers as well as a number of new games including Daniele Liverani’s new game, Genius – A Rock Game. The Virtual Apple database is used by the ActiveGS App and other Apple II emulator apps to supply all the game information and disks to their apps. To download the latest version of the app, click the update…
Ben Heckendorn has posted the second episode of his retro build of an Apple-1 clone. This episode covers adding the keyboard and display of the data to the build. For those of you who missed the first episode, you can catch it in an earlier posting here at: http://www.callapple.org/hardware/ben-heck-building-an-apple-1-from-scratch/ The third episode is scheduled for next week and will complete the build with the case and other final adjustments to the build. Episode 2:
According to reports, famed Apple programmer Bob Bishop passed away September 29th. Bob was known for many early Apple II programs which highlighted the capabilities of the Apple II computer and was constantly pushing the boundaries. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison receiving his PhD. He went on to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his missions included working on Apollo 17, the last mission to the moon. He published a number of titles for…
Apple Computer Inc went through many versions of standards with their brand, products and product presentation over the years. A recent Acquisition by Apple II Enthusiast Javier Rivera shows the standards which were followed when presenting the Apple brand from the early 1980’s in a much clearer light. This 42 page book is a gold mine of information and shows the purest essence of the Apple II and the beginnings of the company we know today. To download the PDF,…
While we don’t often comment on politics, earlier today, president Obama laid forth a proposal to the Federal Communications Commission to enact the toughest Open Net-Neutrality laws possible. His commentary that the Internet should remain unregulated with respect to control of content access is the first real proposal for such openness from his administration. Obama’s detailed proposal came through an open letter to the people on Whitehouse.gov and is as follows: An open Internet is essential to the American economy,…
Ben Heckendorn’s latest video series is now covering the building of an Apple-1 computer from scratch. The Apple-1 was Steve Wozniak’s first commercially available computer and was sold initially by Steve Jobs through The Byte Shop in Mountain View, California. Ben Heckendorn is famous for his hacks of vintage and modern gaming and computing platforms. His videos over the past few years have come to represent the leading edge of hacks for these platforms. The Apple-1 shown by Ben in…
The programming group, French Touch, has released a new 3-Dimensional demo on the Apple II. The Unlimited Bobs demo was programmed on a Standard 1 MHz Apple //e computer and is shown in the video below: The demo will run in emulation on Applewin, JACE, and ActiveGS. For more information about the French Touch or Unlimited Bobs, check out the French Touch home page at : http://www.ctrl-pomme-reset.fr/french-touch/ You can also download the disk image in Emulator format from the…
A new Apple II game, Genius, has been released by Daniele Liverani. The game was primarily written for performance with emulators but has been optimized to run on the original hardware as well. You can try the game out on the Virtual Apple II website at: http://www.virtualapple.org/geniusdisk.html Genius is currently available for free download from: For emulator or Original hardware — https://www.facebook.com/download/852863848091025/GENIUS_Apple_%5D%5B_Ver4B.dsk The source code for the game has also been released and is available in an RTF format document…
REuters is reporting that an Aple-1 computer originally owned by Charles Ricketts is going on the auction block at Christies Auction House. The Apple-1 is fully functional and comes complete with the cancelled check from the purchase in July 1976. Estimated to go at about 600,000 USD, this particular Apple-1 has been owned by three people including Bruce Waldack and its current owner Luther Roberts. While other auction houses have had better luck with selling Apple-1 computers, Christies has only…
by Rick SutcliffeNovember 2014 The new iPhone six plusis just about everything Apple has touted–sufficient screen real estate, speed, snazzy design, plus runnable iOS enhancements to last for…well, the next year or two for some folk, though the Spy will make his serve far longer. Delivery took over a month from the order date, and except for a last minute glitch where the truck returned it to the depot (quitting time apparently arrived before the UPS driver did) was near…
A working Apple-1 computer recently listed by Bonhams Auction House has sold for a world record 905,000 USD. This particular Apple-1, originally sold by the Byte Shop in Mountain View, Ca., was one of 50 hand built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in the famed Apple garage, is one of only 15 known to actually function. This Apple-1 will reside at it’s new home, The Henry Ford Museum. For more on the Bonham’s auction, check out the auction website…
On this, the third anniversary of Steve Jobs passing, we take a look back at the man we knew or thought we knew. Many of us had passing experiences with the one person who changed so much about the way we do business and run our personal lives. Where would the world be without the iPhone or the iPad or the iPod. These three items made our daily lives different in the way we enjoyed our music, our movies and…
Apple this week released the Gold Master Candidates for Mac OS X Yosemite and XCode 6.1 also put Apple in the position of asking developers to submit their Yosemite based Apps to the app store. The latest version of Mac OS X and also the development environment XCode are in the final stages of work correctly bugs and are expected to be released within the next couple of weeks. For more information, check out the Apple Developer news website…
Jeremy Rand has released Apple2BuildPipeline to simplify and facilitate making Apple II software on OS X with Xcode. Based on a project by Quinn Dunki, Rand says, “The big change is that I have created an installer which adds a template in Xcode for Apple II projects…So, the next time you are thinking of starting some new project in Xcode, you can think ‘should I build something for iOS, Mac OS X or maybe the Apple II.’ When you select…
